


In This Humour Woo'd

by DesireeArmfeldt



Category: Canadian 6 Degrees, Slings & Arrows
Genre: Challenge Response, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Missing Scene, POV Female Character, POV Third Person Limited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-11
Updated: 2012-05-11
Packaged: 2017-11-05 04:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Geoffrey and Ellen make an attempt to earn their happy ending. By talking a lot. </p>
<p>Missing scene from the end of Season 3. Takes place between the last act and the tag/epilogue.</p>
<p>Originally written for the <a href="http://fan-flashworks.livejournal.com">fan-flashworks</a> Communication challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In This Humour Woo'd

Of course, they don’t blow off curtain call to screw in an electricity closet in a church basement.  They’re arguing (in stifled, giggling whispers, in between hugs and congratulations with cast and audience) about whether to blow off the cast party, but then Maria comes out of the back with the chronic scowl wiped from her face, and tells them that Charles is dead. 

Geoffrey goes so still and blank that Ellen’s heart stops for a moment; he’s gone again, she’s absolutely certain.  But someone has to be a responsible adult, here, so Ellen pulls on Queen Gertrude (pre-closet) and calmly tells Maria to call an ambulance.  She finds Nahum disassembling the lights and asks him to assemble the cast and get rid of the audience.  She keeps a tight hold on Geoffrey’s arm while she does these things, towing him beside her like a sidecar, not daring to look into his face in case there’s no one at home in his eyes.  At some point, Anna bustles over to her, and obviously someone’s briefed her, or else Anna just knows these things because she’s Anna.  And Ellen’s never gotten along particularly well with Anna, but right now she could kiss her.  Ellen gratefully hands over the job of figuring out what needs to be taken care of and taking care of it, and Anna squeezes first her arm, then Geoffrey’s, before disappearing in a burst of sorrowful competence.

“Thank God for people like her,” says Geoffrey.

Ellen looks up at him.  He’s looking at Anna’s retreating back, but then his face turns toward Ellen and he meets her eyes.  Not the wild look she’s seen too often in the two and a half years since he blew back into New Burbage and her life; not— _oh, thank God!_ —the horrible emptiness that she remembers from the one time she visited him in the psychiatric hospital, back at the end of their other lifetime.  Geoffrey is crying, silently, tears streaking his face, but there’s nothing more complicated than sorrow in his glistening eyes.

She squeezes his arm, and he lays his big hand over hers and presses back.

“You all right?” she asks, now that she mostly knows the answer.

He nods.  “I can’t think of a better way to go,” he says.  “I’m pretty sure Charles would agree.”

“Figure out some way to arrange that for us, would you?” she asks.

He quirks a smile at her, blinking away the last of his tears.  “I’m not sure which gods one has to talk to for that, but I’ll look into it.”

Geoffrey makes the announcement to the cast.  He breaks it to them calmly, gently, but straight-up, and the company takes their cue from him: shock (though not surprise; everyone was all too aware that it was coming, after all), sadness, thoughtful melancholy.  Sophie is the only one who cries.  Sophie is also the one who suggests that they all go out together and drink a toast to Charles’s memory.

It’s possibly the least raucous cast party Ellen has ever attended, but even with most of the post-show high drowned by sudden thoughts of mortality, there’s. . .an intimacy, that’s what it is.  A different sort of intimacy than you get with most shows.  Deeper.  Ellen finds herself conscious of just how long she’s known and worked with some of these people: Cyril, Frank, Jerry.  Maria, for God’s sake.  Barbara, who has known Ellen longer than almost anyone here, and never mind that the past few weeks have taught Ellen how little she and Barbara know each other, still, Barbara knows parts of Ellen that few other people do, and that’s worth something, it is.  Anna—not a member of the company, exactly, but she’s here anyway, sitting between Frank and Cyril and crying quietly into a barely-touched glass of beer, but looking somehow happier than she usually does.

Even the newer company members seem to feel it, and there isn’t the division between senior and junior actors that prevails most of the time, even at cast parties.  Ellen’s not sure if it’s enduring the horrible rehearsal period together that has brought them together like this, or Charles’s death, or the act of rebellion they’ve just committed together out of love for their art (because, oh God, they might all be out of a job tomorrow, Richard is dumb enough and vindictive enough to sack them all!).

Or maybe it’s Geoffrey; the magic that he worked for Charles, and for himself, and for them all, flowing out and binding them all together.  If it is, she’s not sure he’s aware of it right now.  He sits in the booth beside her all night, not saying much unless spoken to, never letting go of her hand.  She’s not watching how much he drinks, but either he keeps it moderate, or he’s drunk in an uncharacteristically quiet and low-key sort of way.  She starts to worry a little about that, but then he turns to her and, apparently out of the blue, murmurs in her ear, “I just want to make sure I’ve got this straight.  Are we getting married?”

“Yes,” she whispers back.  “I mean, don’t you want to?”

“I was just checking,” he says.  “Sometimes I miss things.”

Then he kisses her for such a long time that when they finally come up for air, the entire company is clustered around watching them and gives them a round of applause.  Cyril strikes up one of his music-hall tunes on the piano, and the party suddenly gets happier for a while. 

Geoffrey blinks at her with a smile that makes her heart clench and her thighs tremble, so she slips her hand out of his and slides it into his lap (under cover of the table).

“How late do we need to stay?” she murmurs, with all the heat she knows how to put into her voice.

“Uh,” he says.  “I’m sure they can manage without us.”

They walk home through the side streets, holding hands and stopping every few blocks to kiss each other breathless.  Finally, they get to Ellen’s house— _their_  house, soon, and Ellen’s not sure if the flutter in her stomach at that thought is excitement or anxiety or both, but she doesn’t need to worry about that right now, not when they have an engagement to consummate.

But Geoffrey balks at the porch steps.

“Ellen. . .I don’t think I can do this,” he murmurs.

“We don’t have to have sex,” she says, although that would be a serious shame at this point.  “I mean, God, it’s been a really long day, a hard day.  You must need to crash.”

“No, it’s not that.  I just—God, Ellen, it’s just. . .”  Geoffrey rakes one hand through his bird’s-nest hair, the other still holding hers tightly.  “It’s—the house, your house, your bed, if we go in there, we’ll just. . .start it all over again.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing,” Ellen says, her stomach going cold.

“Yes—No—“  Geoffrey frowns with closed eyes up at the stars.  “We can’t go  _back._   We have to go  _on._ ”

“Geoffrey,” says Ellen, trying to be patient and understanding, trying not to get mad or terrified.  “I said I’d marry you.  I thought you figured that out.”

“Eventually, yes,” he breathes, with a hint of a smile.  “And I want that more than anything.  But what I don’t want is to be divorced or sleeping in my office a year from now.”

She pulls her hand out of his grasp and turns away.  “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

“I know.  I  _know_ , Ellen.  But you’ve kicked me out of this house twice in the past year.  And I can’t—we can’t—if we’re going to do this, we need to find some other way to do this.  Some way that will work.”

“So, what, I’m a fickle, shallow, volatile bitch who’s going to toss you out of bed because I’m having a bad hair day, is that what you’re saying?”

“No!  I’m saying. . .”  He sighs.  She can picture the irritation draining from his face, to be replaced with that lost puppy-dog look.  She knows what’s coming next, and she is  _not_  going to look at him while he’s doing it, she’s not. 

“Do  _not_ use your earnest voice on me, Geoffrey,” she says.

“I—excuse me?”

“You’re about to say something beautiful and honest and terribly flattering that will move me to tears, and then you’ll ask me for whatever it is you think you need me to do, and I’ll do it because I can’t say no to you when you use that voice, and you know it, you bastard.”

Silence from Geoffrey.  And more silence; an unbelievably long silence for Geoffrey, who is rarely at a loss for words and completely incapable of keeping his mouth shut for more than a minute at a time.  Ellen wonders whether he’s actually managed to walk away without her hearing him go, but she knows that’s ridiculous.  So she stands there, refusing to turn around and peek.  Stands there like fucking Orpheus on the path out of Hell, but Orpheus had no discipline; Ellen knows how to freeze when the audience’s eyes are on her, she’s been in shows that required her to do so for ten minutes at a stretch.  Every night and twice on matinee days.  So she holds her ground and waits for Geoffrey Fucking Tennant to say something that will either bring them out into light and life or send her back to a lonely hell.

Then it occurs to her that maybe he’s not going to speak until she does.  Of course he’s not; he’s making a point.  But is the point that Ellen is being pissy and immature and unreasonable?  Or is the point that Ellen is  _right_ , that she has a  _point_  and he’s conceding it?  That he’s not talking because she told him not to?  Or that he’s not talking because he understands how unfair it would be?

She turns around and yes, he’s still standing right where she left him, gazing at her with solemn, yearning eyes that are really almost as bad as the voice.  He places his right hand over his mouth and keeps looking at her.

“You know, I’ve always kind of hated the whole Orpheus story,” she says.  “I mean, yes, all right, I get all teary at the idea of love and loyalty that last beyond death.”  Geoffrey’s eyes flicker, but he doesn’t move, so she goes on.  “And going into Hell to rescue your lover, that’s a great story.  But what kind of a moral is it that the way to get to the happy ending is by not talking to each other or even looking at each other?  I mean, you’ve got to hope that that’s not a prediction of how their future relationship is going to be.”

Even in the dim light, she can see Geoffrey’s eyes crinkle with humor.  But he keeps his silence, and his hand over his mouth.

“Orpheus gets a bad enough deal,” she goes on.  “Don’t look back, just have faith that the girl’s following you.  But Eurydice really gets shafted.  Hey, you might get to live after all, but only if you shut up and follow your man, and trust him to have enough faith in this frankly pretty ludicrous deal with a god to get you both out of here.”

Normally, Geoffrey would have all sorts of things to say in response to this cavalier dismissal of a classical text.  Without his passionate intellectual rhetoric, Ellen feels a little off-balance, but she keeps talking, curious to hear what’s going to come out of her mouth next.

“You know, this whole show has been like that for me.  You were acting—well, not like a lunatic, I’ll give you that, you were much less. . .more calm and stable than you were last season.  But you were letting Charles do some pretty crazy and destructive stuff and not taking control or protecting the cast.  And I know now why you were doing it, or at least I kind of understand, but the thing is, Geoffrey, you weren’t telling us the reasons.  You weren’t telling  _me_  the reasons, even when I asked you, even when I tried to help.  You kept telling me to have faith in you.  Close my eyes and trust that you’d make everything all right.  And I’ve seen you pull miracles out of your ass, but I’ve also seen you make some spectacular screw-ups, but that’s not even the point.  The point is—the point is—you wanted me to trust you, but you didn’t trust me.  You have  _never_  trusted me.   _Never_ —“  Suddenly she’s gasping for breath and crying,  _fuck_ , the last thing she wants is to fall apart right now, demonstrating that she’s a hopeless mess.

Geoffrey doesn’t take her in his arms and absorb her tears with his shoulder.  Instead he sinks slowly to his knees before her and closes her two hands flat between his own, prayer-fashion.  Brings them to his lips, looking up at her with wide eyes.

“You trusted Charles,” she chokes out.  “You trusted  _Anna_ , but you didn’t trust me.  Even when you told me, it wasn’t because you trusted me, it wasn’t because you wanted my  _help_ , as your _partner_ , you just wanted to get me back in your stupid  _show_ , and if you could have pulled a new Regan out of your pocket, you wouldn’t even have  _bothered._ ”

If he were standing, if her hands were free, she’d batter his chest with blows she knows won’t hurt him.  But looking down at him, in that submissive pose at her feet, her hands pressed between his—it’s a pose, it’s theatre, Geoffrey knows what he looks like, he’s as incapable of not posing for effect as Ellen herself.  Ellen starts giggling between her sobs.

“Oh, God, Geoffrey, how can we be honest with each other, we’re both such actors, we don’t know how to do anything but play to the back row.”

Geoffrey flinches.  He lets go of her hands and sits back on his ass.  He opens his mouth, then turns his hands palms-up, asking permission to speak.  She waves a hand—a much too queenly gesture, but she’s not sure she could get more words out right this second.

“It’s not an act,” says Geoffrey quietly.  “I admit I’m acting, but not. . .falsely.  This is how I communicate.  You, too.  It’s who we are, after all.” 

“Oh, Geoffrey.”  She sighs.  “Why is it so hard just to be happy?”

“Because if it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t be worth doing?” he suggests.

She snorts to acknowledge the sort-of joke.

“I’m sorry, Ellen,” he says, so slowly that she can almost see him lining up thoughts one at a time and examining them.  “You’re right, I’ve been shutting you out all this time, even when I thought. . .I don’t actually know what I thought.  I guess I thought that if we could just be together again, that would be it, happily ever after, ring down the curtain.  I mean, I know life isn’t like that, but I just. . .I’ve had a lot of other stuff to work through, and I wanted. . .I wanted you to be the place where I could be safe, where it would all just go away. . .I didn’t want anything to. . .tarnish it. . .I was afraid.”  He blinks as though he’s surprised himself, then goes on, feeling his way through the words.  “Afraid to want too much, to—yes, to trust.  Because I did trust you, before, and you pulled the rug out from under me, and I still don’t understand why, it just  _was_ , and I thought I could accept that and move on, but I don’t  _want_ —I can accept that it’s just something that happened, but that makes it just part of your nature, and how do I. . .trust. . . ?”  He breaks off, frowning and shaking his head, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees.

“So it’s always going to come back to that?  I made one stupid mistake, so everything bad that’s ever happened to us is my fault?”  She knows anger and defensiveness aren’t going to help in this situation, but she can’t help feeling them and the feelings come right out in her voice.

“No,” he says, and just in that one word, his voice slides from lost to cold anger.  “It’s not all your fault.  I admit it took both of us to screw this up.  But it also wasn’t just once.”

Ellen wonders wildly how Geoffrey can have found out about her sleeping with her brother-in-law, before telling herself firmly that he can’t possibly know.  She keeps her mouth shut.  Geoffrey’s waiting for her to respond, but she outwaits him for once.

“You turned on me,” he says.  “I told you about seeing Oliver, and you told Henry about it, knowing he would use it against me.  I told you about Charles, when you asked me, and you told Barbara, and gee, who could have guessed that that would end badly?  I admitted you were right and groveled to Henry to get him to come back, and got socked in the face by all concerned for my trouble.”

“I talked to Henry and Barbara because they were my  _friends,_ ” Ellen spits back.  “At least, I thought they were my friends, and I had to trust someone, because I couldn’t talk to  _you,_  you weren’t _there_.  You were off spending all your time with Oliver or Charles or by yourself for all I know, and I was all  _alone_.  I needed you, but you wouldn’t trust me, you wouldn’t talk to me, because, you know what?  It doesn’t matter who you’ve slept with or who you haven’t in the past eight years, you’ve never needed me the way I need you, and it fucking  _kills_  me, Geoffrey.”

Silence, with crickets, and the faint whoosh of cars on other streets.  Geoffrey’s eyes are big in his shocked face.

She wants to cradle him in her arms and kiss him and make it all better.  She wants to cut his heart out.

“No,” he whispers, finally.  “That isn’t. . .no.”

“Oliver warned me, years ago,” she says.  “But I didn’t listen.  I thought he was—I thought he was just jealous, and seeing what he wanted to see, or maybe even deliberately trying to screw things up between us.”

“He probably was.  Oliver had. . .issues.  With me.”

Laughter rips out of her, a harsh cackle that sounds like she’s auditioning for one of the Weird Sisters.  “You’ve finally figured that out?”

Geoffrey slumps over, face in his hands.  “Is that why—why you—with Oliver?”  She can barely hear him.

_What the hell, why not?_  she thinks.   _We’re already fucked, what’s a little more honesty?_

“Probably,” she tells him.  “I mean, as far as I was thinking about reasons, which I wasn’t, I was just acting on feelings, you know me, that’s what I do.” 

She can’t remember anything about the act itself, and not much before or after, either.  Weeping in Oliver’s arms, Geoffrey’s pale, shocked face through the window, mirror to his face in her dressing room when she told him.  Those she remembers, though more like pictures from a movie, now, than memories of things that actually happened to her.  But Oliver’s hands on her, Oliver inside her—she knows it happened, but she can’t call up a single image.

She kneels down beside him in the damp grass— _his ass must be soaked_ —and tentatively touches his arm. 

“I love you,” says Geoffrey, his voice muffled by his hands but his diction crystal clear.  “I love you desperately.  I loved you while I was having a psychotic break, and I loved you for seven years of not seeing you, and I’ve loved you since the minute I set foot in New Burbage, and I loved you when we were not speaking and when we were fighting and when I was living in the storage closet and when I was bunking with Charles while you got cozy with Barbara.” 

He raises his face to look her in the eyes.  She wants to flinch away from his gaze, but she’s well-trained at keeping eye contact even when it’s uncomfortable, so she keeps looking.  And Geoffrey keeps talking. 

“You’re the love of my life,” he says.  “The only one.  In fact, most people would probably say the way I love you is not healthy, but I can’t help that, it’s just the way things are.  And, you know, maybe you should run screaming.  But need you?  Ellen, there are two things I need in this life.  Theatre, and you.  And I don’t—I thought you—I didn’t know you. . .felt that way.”  He takes a breath, shakes his head.  “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” she says.  “But, Geoffrey. . .I’m better when I’m with you.  Onstage and off.  I’m happier.  Nicer.  Less crazy.  More. . .adult.  And I thought, or I hoped. . .that you felt the same way.  And that you wanted to try being a grownup with me.”

“Not just two idiots in love?” he asks, actually smiling a little.  “Yes, I think that would be. . .salutary.  Not to mention, novel.”

“And scary.”

“Yes, that too.  But don’t worry, I expect there will be plenty of immature behavior and scenery-chewing fights.  We’re both opinionated, stubborn, terrified drama queens, after all.”

“Well, that’s better than being a couple of big, fat losers, right?”

“Indeed.”  He takes her hand in both of his.  “Ellen, I’m sorry I’ve shut you out, I honestly am.  You deserve better than that from me.  Not only that, but every time you’ve tried to talk to me about problems with one of the shows, you’ve been right.  You were thinking about the good of the show, and the good of the company, and that is high up on the list of the many many reasons why I love you.  And why I need you in my life and my work.”

He looks at her tenderly, expectantly, and Ellen knows a cue when she hears one, and she really does want to be standing, someday soon, in a stunning white dress, looking up into those eyes that whole audiences can drown in, but that only see her.  And maybe part of the point of marriage vows is to force young—and not-so-young—idiots in love to at least have some slight notion of what they’re signing on for.

“Geoffrey,” she says.  “I’m sorry I haven’t been strong enough, or brave enough, or. . .adult enough to keep my promises to you, or to. . .be someone you can depend on.  And I don’t know if I can.  I mean, I promised myself I was going to get my life together and start taking charge of my destiny, and what did I do?  I let Barbara talk me into quitting theatre, and then I let you talk me into quitting TV, and now I’m probably going to be blackballed by both, and I still owe a gazillion dollars in back taxes.  So I don’t know what I can promise you, but Geoffrey, I want to make this work.  I want to be an adult, and I want you to be able to depend on me.  There’s only two things that matter for me, too.”

“Okay,” says Geoffrey, and he opens his arms and folds her against his chest. 

“Let’s go home,” he whispers into her hair.  “Take me home.”

So she does, and she takes him to bed, where he makes good on his backstage promise and then some.

With her head resting on his chest, his arm wrapped around her, Ellen feels Geoffrey’s breathing relax.  He’s half-gone into sleep already, but she doesn’t want to lie awake all night wondering.

“Geoffrey?  I don’t think I’d want to give up acting.  I mean, even for a little while.”

“Mph?  Might be a dry spell, but you’ll find work, don’t worry.  Maybe I’ll start a company for you, how would you like that?”  His consonants are slurred, a sure sign that he’s falling asleep even while he’s talking.

“I mean, if we had a baby,” she whispers.

“Why the hell would we want to do that?” he mutters.

She blinks a few times in the dark, and Geoffrey’s breathing slips into true sleep.  She has no idea whether that was Geoffrey’s uncensored feelings or disconnected gibberish.  She could wake him up and make him talk it out, but they’ve talked enough for one night.  There will be time enough to deal with it another day.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I love Slings & Arrows, but there are a number of things that frustrate me about it. One is that I feel like Season 3 has a good plan but runs out of time or energy or something and rushes to wrap up certain plot-lines at the end. Specifically, the Geoffrey/Ellen romance, which I want to love but is another thing that frustrates me for various reasons. So, this fic is an unabashed fix-it, in which the characters confront each other about a number of issues that the author wishes they'd had a chance to make peace about on-screen. (Though hopefully they wouldn't have blithered at quite such length as I make them do here. :) )


End file.
